My family, my boyfriend and I decided to go to KiTARO in O’Fallon for my 16th birthday dinner.

It turned out to be not so sweet. It was more like a dark bar full of TVs playing football games, and men donning baseball caps and jeering for their teams. We felt a little overdressed, as my mom and I wore dresses and my dad a nice button down and jacket. Most of the people in there were wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

We were eventually seated in the “back Hibachi room”. Pieces of shrimp still lay on the floor from the previous service. My dad’s fork had a piece of shrimp still stuck between the two tines.

Before our chef came by and introduced himself, we got served a salty miso soup and salad. Before I even started eating mine, a server came by and took it from me.

The chef eventually came by and set the grill on fire. This would’ve been awesome, had the fire not felt like it was on top of me. Then, our chef threw a bowl full of noodles on the grill and started slapping the spatula on it. Once cooked, he took a giant portion and dropped it above each plate. It made a nice thud, and half of it was spilled on the table.

As soon as we were served the noodles, a bucket-full of oil soaked rice was thrown on the grill and once again slapped, and “cut” into massive portions. The center was still hard and there were no vegetables until most of the table finished their rice and pasta.

By the time we finished the rice/noodle/vegetable plate, the chef started cooking what we actually ordered. The chicken, scallops, shrimp and steak were all laid out on top of each other, as if there wasn’t enough room to fit all of it. Our chef used the same spatula to serve, mix and cut everything that was on the grill. He was flipping raw chicken and then throwing the scallops on plates. The chef did the same with the steak and shrimp, all while continually flipping the raw chicken.

Ironically, it was the people that ate the chicken that got sick, probably because he covered half-cooked chicken in cold teriyaki sauce before immediately serving it up. The teriyaki sauce cooled down the chicken so that it didn’t get to the right temperature and kept it half-cooked.

The bills were served up just like the next course – in other words, basically tossed at us.

One thing we know for sure is we won’t be going back. Even though the food was decent, the end result of food poisoning from contaminated and raw food totally an experience that could’ve been memorable and fun.